Structural door beams are designed to protect automobile occupants from injury during a side impact collision. When properly designed, the structural door beam should have high rigidity in a direction transverse to the direction of the force applied during a side impact automobile collision. Commonly, structural door beams are stamped from sheet metal to various cross sectional shapes, including hat-shaped or corrugated configurations. In some cases, reinforcement plates are welded to the beam and/or any voids therein are filled with foam materials, etc. The stiffness of the resulting structural door beam is improved, but this improvement is accompanied by increased weight and/or cost of the vehicle door.
In order to meet minimum fuel efficiency requirements and to reduce the unit cost of new automobiles, without sacrificing passenger safety, there has been an ongoing effort to reduce the mass and/or cost of automobile components. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a structural door beam possessing improved stiffness compared to a currently available structural door beam of similar mass and of similar material composition.